Langston Hughes Quotes

153 Sourced Quotes

Wear it
Like a banner
Lor the proud—
Not like a shroud.

Langston Hughes
Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow.

Langston Hughes
"Besides," Milberry said to himself, "the ways of white folks, I mean some white folks, is too much for me. I reckon they must be a few good ones, but most of 'em ain't good—leastwise they don't treat me good. And Lawd know, I ain't never done nothin' to 'em, nothin' a-tall.

Langston Hughes
No matter how belligerent or lewd their talk was, or how sordid the tales they told—of dangerous pleasures and strange perversities—these black men laughed.... No matter how hard life might be, it was not without laughter.

Langston Hughes
Practical man,
He said, Train your head,
Your heart, and your hand.
Your fate is here
Not afar,
So let down your bucket
Where you are.

Langston Hughes
AND THEY ASKED ME RIGHT AT CHRISTMAS
IF MY BLACKNESS WOULD RUB OFF?
I SAID, ASK YOUR MAMA.

Langston Hughes
I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing... not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

Langston Hughes
The white race drug me over here from Africa, slaved me, freed me, lynched me, starved me during the depression, Jim Crowed me during the war—then they come talking about they is scared of me! Which is why I am glad I have got one spot to call my own where I hold sway—Harlem

Langston Hughes
As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

Langston Hughes
Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

Langston Hughes
A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

Langston Hughes
The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.

Langston Hughes
I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

Langston Hughes
I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Langston Hughes
One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

Langston Hughes
A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free

Langston Hughes
When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

Langston Hughes
When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

Langston Hughes
Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?

Langston Hughes
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Langston Hughes
But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There's a song that says, "the time ain't long." That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

Langston Hughes
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes
Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

Langston Hughes
AND ONE SHOULD LOVE ONE'S COUNTRY
FOR ONE'S COUNTRY IS YOUR MAMA.

Langston Hughes
Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

Langston Hughes
Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

Langston Hughes
Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

Langston Hughes
Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.

Langston Hughes
Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

Langston Hughes
This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.

Langston Hughes